The poor kid was lying on the ground, and now here came the ambulance.

All he tried to do was catch a football in the center of the defense. But Calvin Pryor, otherwise a pleasant young man, has never tolerated catches over the middle.

Not during his three-year college career at Louisville, as he built himself from a small-town Florida kid into the Jets’ newest safety, as the 18th overall pick in this year’s NFL Draft. Not even more than a decade ago, when he played in a youth league game as a 10-year-old and drilled that opponent in the back, leaving him sprawled out.

“He was out for a while,” Pryor said. “Ever since then, I’ve been known as the Bone Crusher. But I don’t let that get out anymore, because people might take that the wrong way.”

Pryor spoke about this moment in even, quiet tones, not bragging, almost apologetic, as if something terrible had ultimately happened to that kid.

“He lived, man,” Pryor said. “But I think he broke a couple bones.”

Pryor has never aimed to injure. Yet his hits resonate throughout his football life. Everyone involved has a favorite – a blow-by-blow account of how Pryor pulled himself out of tiny Port St. Joe, Fla., and now into the NFL.

From those who know Pryor, his hits inspire hyperbole: Is the recipient still breathing? They inspire flattering comparisons to a former NFL star safety. And even as questions remain about his coverage skills, they inspire, in the Jets, a belief that he can help repair their ailing secondary, one collision at a time.

MAP DOT ROOTS

Pryor, who is 5-11 and 207 pounds, came by his strength honestly in Port St. Joe. His family has roots in the city of 3,400, a Panhandle map dot on the Gulf of Mexico’s shores. Want to see a movie? Drive 50 minutes northwest to Panama City.

It is mostly a lagging place. One grocery store, two stoplights. The paper mill is long gone. The chemical plant was shuttered five years ago. The city’s tourism and scalloping industries forge on, keeping Port St. Joe afloat.

Around the city, Pryor goes by Third Man, or Third, because his grandfather and father share his name. His father also played football at Port St. Joe High School. “Strong as an ox,” is how former Port St. Joe coach Vern Barth, who coached the younger Pryor, described his father. Barth said Pryor II still bench presses reps of 350 pounds with a group of men who work out in an old, cinder-block weight-room building near the high school. The building, lacking air conditioning, is called the Sweat Box.

Barth, having just arrived at Port St. Joe, met Calvin Pryor III before his sophomore year. That fall, Pryor popped a teammate in practice so hard “he almost caused the kid not to come back out to football practice ever again,” Barth said. As a small school, Port St. Joe had about 30 players on the football roster, at most. Barth needed to keep everyone healthy just to field a team, so he told Pryor to not hit at full speed in practice.

But in games? No limits. During a game at Freeport, another small Gulf city, Pryor’s hits sidelined two opponents, including a tight end running a seam route who tried to catch a high pass – and paid for it. On the sideline, Barth winced at the crash.

“I thought he broke the kid’s back,” Barth said.

To get Pryor noticed beyond the Panhandle, Barth drove him to showcase events like Urban Meyer’s Friday Night Lights camp at the University of Florida, where Pryor competed against Matt Elam, a future first-round pick who is a year older than him.

Still, projecting how small-town players will handle high-level college football is often difficult. For all his eye-widening tackles, Pryor made his case to Louisville’s coaches away from the football field. They attended his basketball games and saw this 5-11 point guard dunking, darting past defenders and demonstrating elite ball skills.

“That made it an easy decision,” said Vance Bedford, Louisville’s former defensive coordinator. “When we saw him play basketball, it was a no brainer.”

PLAY LINEBACKER? NEVER

Louisville’s coaches told Pryor that if he arrived weighing 210 pounds, they might have to move him to linebacker.

“Nah, you’re not moving me to linebacker,” Pryor replied.

Seven games into his freshman year, 2011, he was starting at safety. On the fourth play of his first start, he baited Rutgers’ Gary Nova into throwing over the middle and picked him off.

“I knew then we had a special player,” Bedford said.

Hit by hit, everyone else started to notice, too. Last season, Pryor knocked an opponent out of three consecutive games. His head-on sideline blow of Connecticut receiver Deshon Foxx – with both men running full speed and Foxx’s shoulder lowered as he saw Pryor and braced for contact – remains a favorite of Louisville’s coaching staff, even though Pryor drew a 15-yard penalty for helmet-to-helmet contact.

“That really stuck out to me because the kid didn’t move,” said former Louisville receivers coach Ron Dugans, who recruited Pryor. “I was like, ‘Oh, I think he killed him.’”

On the next play, Pryor hit running back Martin Hyppolite in the back as defensive end Marcus Smith stripped the ball. The game’s first series, which began with Connecticut’s offense looking efficient, had ended with a turnover, after Pryor’s first hit energized Louisville.

“We kind of came out a little bit sluggish that game,” said Tommy Restivo, Pryor’s defensive backs coach at Louisville. “That (hit on Foxx) kind of got the defense rolling. That one, by far, was my favorite hit. He’s so explosive from five to 10 yards that he can accelerate through and roll his hips.”

But just as much as any hit, Pryor impressed Restivo with his mental sharpness. In one game against Rutgers, Louisville’s coaches asked Pryor to do a lot – play in the middle of the defense, defend the post route, and blitz to stop the run.

The coaches blitzed Pryor so often during his career – and he did it so well – that they kept teasing him: “You want to play linebacker.” In that Rutgers game, Louisville brought Pryor on a blitz designed for him to deflect a blocking fullback on a power running play. Pryor, always a quick film-room study, did one better. He cut-blocked the fullback, whirled around, sprinted up the field and tackled the tailback for a loss.

“Everybody sees him knocking guys out, but just the little detail of how he did things was just tremendous,” Restivo said. “He approached the game just like an NFL guy.”

Pryor, the Third Man from tiny Port St. Joe, had become his own player, a Bone Crusher on a grand stage that will get grander still, if projections about him prove accurate. Dugans, his recruiter, played receiver in the NFL from 2000-02 with the Bengals. When they played the Chargers, Dugans marveled at safety Rodney Harrison’s “reckless abandon.”